Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Headlines - Tuesday March 15

It's a good thing we're still in Afghanistan preventing suicide attacks ... oh, wait. "At least 36 people have been killed in an apparent suicide attack on an army recruitment centre in northern Afghanistan, local officials have said. More than 40 people were also reported to have been injured in the attack in the city of Kunduz. On Friday, the Kunduz province police chief was killed by a suicide bomber. Over the past few years, the once peaceful province has become increasingly unstable as the Taliban have infiltrated the area. The Taliban have said they carried out this attack. Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned it as an "unforgivable act of terror". People were waiting in the recruitment centre when the attack took place, a senior official told the BBC's Bilal Sarwary. Those killed included civilians - some of them women and children - as well as men who had come to enrol, and officers in the Afghan army, he said."

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Thank you, Baby Jeebus for the gift of Bachmann

I'll tell you one thing, if I was ever to run for President of the United States, I think the first thing I would do in the first debate is offer my birth certificate, so we can get that off the table.

Fox News is doing a bang up job of covering the crisis in Japan (via).

One name seems out of place on the graphic—that of "Shibuyaeggman."

[....]

[F]urther inquiries revealed that Eggman is the name of a dance club in a trendy neighborhood of Tokyo called… Shibuya.

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When the umpire is biased

During his opening statement at his confirmation hearing, Chief Justice John Roberts told the Senators that his job was to be an umpire:

Judges are like umpires. ... The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. ... And I will remember that it's my job to call balls and strikes …

But John Roberts has proven to be a very biased umpire.

Think Progress points to a recent report that the Roberts Court has a strong bias in favor of corporations. The NYTs reports that the Roberts Court rules in favor of Corporations over 61% of the time (a 15% gain over the record of the Rehnquist Court in similar cases). And another study finds that Justices in the Roberts Court are biased in favor of Corporations when compared to Justices of the recent past.

Justice under John Roberts is a two-tiered system. As the charts and graphs over at Think Progress and other recent reporting makes clear it is a rigged game. Workers, the middle class, individual liberty and justice take a back seat to the wants of Corporations as the Roberts Court uses one set of standards for their Galtian Overlords and another for everybody else.

To simplify these studies, I thought it might be useful to create a guide to the different Strike Zones that John Roberts uses to call balls and strikes:

A Minneapolis blogger was ordered on Friday to pay $60,000 in damages to an ex-community leader who lost his job because of the blogger's reporting—even though that reporting was accurate. John Hoff connected Jerry Moore, who was employed by the University of Minnesota to study mortgage foreclosures, to a mortgage fraud. Even though the accusations turned out to be true, the jury ruled against Hoff in a suit and awarded Moore $35,000 in lost wages and $25,000 for emotional distress.

It was a bad day for the First Amendment.

So if you lie about someone, they can sue and win, but if you tell the truth, they can sue you and win, too?

Protesters who marched at the home of Wisconsin state senator Randy Hopper (R-Fond du Lac) were met with something of a surprise on Saturday. Mrs. Hopper appeared at the door and informed them that Sen. Hopper was no longer in residence at this address, but now lives in Madison, WI with his 25-year-old mistress.

And you thought Newt Gingrich had no influence in local politics?

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The new face of swarthyoterrorism

Spotting terrorists use to be easy. All it took was a look and a simple question about religion. It was a simple formulation: "swarthy + non-protestant = terrorist." It's been that way since Sacco and Vanzetti. Heck, it's been that way since Nat Turner first frightened everyone darker than a light shade of peach.

But now, just as Rep. Peter King is beginning to look into the link between swarthy-non-protestantism and terrorism, the swarthyoterrorists are switching it up. They're disguising themselves as patriots. On the day before King's hearings, the FBI arrested Kevin William Harpham, a sleeper agent for the Worldwide Swarthy Conspiracy, who hid his Muslim identity by growing up in rural eastern Washington, driving a '66 Chevelle, and joining up with a heritage appreciation society called the "National Alliance."

The FBI arrested five more swarthyoterrorists in patriot disguise on the first day King held his hearings. Charged with plotting to execute policemen and a judge, the swarthyoterrorists had hidden their Islamic identities by forming a militia, declaring themselves to be sovereign citizens, working closely with Rep Don Young on gun rights events.

Surely, this is just the beginning. I'm sure we'll see many more secretly swarthy agents of international terrorism spring from their tea party/conservative/patriot covers to commit acts of terror.

God is so good (he caused the earthquake in Japan). Wow. This chick is psycho.

Speaking of psychos:

On his radio show yesterday, Glenn Beck said Japan's earthquake is a "message" from God to follow the Ten Commandments. After repeatedly connecting human behavior to the natural disasters devastating Japan and "causally mentioning 'radical Islam,'" Beck revealed that answer "is buckle up" because "it's going to be a bumpy ride."

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Impoverished millionaires

Fidelity Investments recently conducted a survey to ask millionaires whether they felt wealthy or not, and it turns out that quite a few of them don't.

Some 42 percent of the more than 1,000 millionaires surveyed by Fidelity said they did not feel wealthy. Respondents had at least $1 million in investable assets, excluding any real estate or retirement accounts.

"Every person in the survey is wealthy," said Sanjiv Mirchandani, president of National Financial, a unit of Fidelity. "But they are still worried about outliving their assets."

The average age of respondents was 56 years old with a mean of $3.5 million of investable assets. The threshold for "rich" rose with age.

I guess we better reduce the salaries and benefits of teachers and firefighters to prevent these millionaires from edging any closer to the poverty level.

The pro-WikiLeaks hacktavist community* known as "Anonymous" released a series of emails today "provided by a former Bank of America employee who claims they show how a division of the bank sought to hide information on foreclosures." Commenting on the documents, one member of "Anonymous" said, "The way the system is, it's made to cheat the average person."

*Goes to bankamericasuck.com which features a 'short' 30min video on why it's called the American "Dream" and the emails and links.

Ya think Wikileaks caught some shit for the Afghan and State Dept. leaks? Now they're fuckin' with the moneychangers. And rightly so, but when it comes to retaliation they ain't seen nuthin' yet.

Note to Anonymous: Ask Jesus how that worked out for him. Watch your backs.

Here's hopin' we see some details in the corporate media and not just on the 'toobz, but more likely we'll hear about what an awful crime the leak is. The Captains of Finance can rape, pillage, plunder, and steal all the money in the world with the help of their Repug toadies and no one says a word, but exposing them is a no-no.

Obama on Boehner: "I used to think that it was a tan, but after seeing how often he tears up I've come to realize that's not a tan -- that's rust."

Really, Dana? On Fox and Fiends Monday Morning, Dana Perino had her panties in a bunch over a joke President Obama made about John Beohner's fake tan and huffed that "this White House" should be the last place on the face of the earth that should make jokes about skin color. At least she didn't say the"N" word.

Americablog: If elected Democrats in DC had any spine or principles, or if they had a leader in the White House -- and given the evidence, I'm not optimistic that they have any of those things -- they would take a cue from this Rachel Maddow segment (thanks for the link, Gaius Publius) and ban forever from their lexicon the term "tax cuts" when discussing Republican tax proposals. Instead, the Dems should refer only to "tax shifts" from the working and middle classes to the rich. Make Republicans defend "tax shifts" from working people to the wealthy, then sit back and watch the fun!

In a similar vein, after reading this post from ThinkProgress today, I wondered: Republicans rail against government intervention in the marketplace (requiring people to buy health insurance or mandating more fuel-efficient cars, for example), but they have no qualms about taking taxpayers' money and handing it over to businesses that have not otherwise earned it. If a business cannot provide quality goods or services that attract customers, then why should government force those same consumer-taxpayers to subsidize such businesses? If Dems would persistently pose the question, it would be fun to watch Republicans make a case FOR government intervention in business.

These are just two more examples of many messages that the Dems might use to good result if they could just maintain more discipline than a herd of cats.

But recall what Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

In our current political climate, the quote applies to both parties, but for different reasons. Republicans maintain the foolish consistency -- or better, the fraudulent one -- that they favor small government, low taxes and free enterprise. But the only reason the GOPers succeed in this delusion is because most Dems maintain a foolishly consistent faith in bipartisanship and a similar unwillingness to play hardball. And finally, the mainstream media contributes its own foolish consistency to the train wreck this nation has become: it enables the little minds of both parties by fawning over and identifying with the establishment even as it fails utterly to pursue its principle mission: to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

With over $6 trillion of workers' money in retirement plans, pension funds, profit-sharing and stock plans and union reserve funds, workers have the ability to reshape the economy and political priorities of the economic elite.

Greedy bastids never thought about the fact the public still holds a lot of money and if they invest it as a bloc, it'll screw all these rich sonsabitches to hell.

Here's something Sarah Palin will be super angry about until somebody (Willow?) tells her Haley Barbour is a Republican: Mississippi white pig Haley Barbour's press secretary sends out a heehawlarious email news roundup "to Barbour's staff and other allies" with fun jokes about Janet Reno looking like a man and all those Japs getting killed by the earthquake/nuclear apocalypse. Palin might even type a "Half u no shamez, Halle Barber?" on her Twitter or whatever! But Haley Barbour's press secretary wants you to know that Haley probably doesn't even read these things, because he is a six-hundred-pound klan-whale who can't figure out the 'puter, so he gets "printouts" of the email, and the jokes are probably not visible on the printouts because of … white southerners are dumb? Yes, let's go with that, which is all we can figure from this Politico item. More here.http://wonkette.com/440545/hilarious-haley-barbour-daily-emails-mock-japanese-quake-victims

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The Obama administration and the GOP "offered a fresh show of support for nuclear power" yesterday despite the nuclear crisis in Japan. The White House said it "vowed to incorporate" lessons from Japan but is committed to keeping "clean" nuclear energy "in the U.S. portfolio" — a position that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said he shared.

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The wife of Wisconsin state Sen. Randy Hopper (R) has signed a recall petition against him after Hopper left his wife and home to live with his 25-year-old mistress outside his legislative district. His maid had already joined the recall effort and Hopper may be in violation of state law by living in another district.

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Today, during a Kansas state House Appropriations Committee hearing on state spending for controlling feral swine, GOP state Rep. Virgil Peck suggested that hunters could shoot undocumented immigrants like they do with pigs in order to control illegal immigration.

The Lawrence Journal World reports that Peck refused to apologize for the remark. "I was just speaking like a southeast Kansas person," he said. The Kansas blog Dome on the Range has the audio clip and direct quote of Peck's remarks. "It looks like to me if shooting these immigrating feral hogs works maybe we have found a [solution] to our illegal immigration problem," he said: